My 4-year-old cried because his school performance was canceled, believing I was responsible for restricting his social gatherings.
“Why won’t you let me go anywhere,” he yelled over and over from the backseat of our car.
My 8-year-old looked devastated when I told him soccer season was canceled.
We talked about flattening the curve of the pandemic*. My older child confirmed that he understood, talking about how we need to try to keep the Cronoavirus from spreading to people most vulnerable.
When I was in the middle of a workshop at a college several days ago, an email went out to all the students, staff, and faculty that the school would be closing in four days. Fear and panic spread, and seniors from working-class families who would be the first in their family to graduate college sobbed with the announcement that graduation ceremonies would be canceled, too.
Thoughts of the devastation this virus would have on the physical and emotional health of people in our lives, of the economic crash on many of us, led me to think about my activism. I knew my work schedule with schools, churches, and community groups all needed to be canceled and, like so many of us, I’d have to figure out other ways to work and pay the bills.
Amidst this crisis, I am coming out of the hamster wheel of logistics and am allowing my mind, heart, and soul to really take in what’s happening all around us. I’ve been looking for leadership and light and love to guide me.
So, when a minister and I were messaging each other about spiritual leadership in this moment, my focus was on what has been nourishing and encouraging me. What has felt powerful and empowering is a weaving together of four main themes:
1. Loving Compassion
Alongside the validation of how serious this COVID-19 pandemic is, for our hearts and souls, it is important for us to hold on to our faith, which can help us stay grounded, connected to one another, and held in sacred solidarity with people, communities, nature and the divine.
2. Economic Relief
Looking at how this global pandemic both plays out on the monstrous inequalities of white supremacy and capitalism and reinforces our beliefs and work for universal health care, public institutions and an economy that puts human rights and dignity at the center with immediate demands of paid sick leave, living wage and social solidarity economic relief programs for poor and working-class people. To focus our anger and focus our love.
3. Share Evidence of Compassion
Lift up examples of ways this pandemic is bringing out our humanity: people helping each other, justice groups getting cities to put a moratorium on evictions, people raising money for artists and others who are losing all their paid work with event cancellations, and anything you can lift up from the local community and congregation. Provide examples of how we can help.
4. Express Care and Love
Take care to say and show that we love each other. In this scary, vulnerable time, there are many forces pushing us towards despair. This is a moment for us to be each other’s lanterns and candles, shining tenderness, sharing our fears, finding moments to laugh and connect socially as we also distance physically. That we are here together, and we are powerful beyond measure.
Hearing and feeling people do these things has been important to me.
Breathing, loving, organizing, believing!
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* For an explanation of “flattening the curve,” watch this detailed video.
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